Master of Architecture

Replacing our crumbling national infrastructure with conventional materials would be only a temporary solution to a critical problem. My research focuses on developing new, more durable materials for use in infrastructure, which will lead to a lowered maintenance burden, improved user safety, and a reduced environmental impact. Personally, the part that I like most about this subject is the chemistry.

Prof. Liu is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). His research focuses on built and urban environment, occupant-building-environment interaction, and integrated design for sustainable and healthy buildings. Prof. Liu envisions his research promoting built sustainability and occupant well-being through the interface among building science, information science, public health, and social science.

I am a designer, researcher, and educator working at the interface of Architecture and engineering. I am currently an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Architectural Engineering program at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, where I teach Design Studio and Great Project Seminar.My primary research interests focus on sustainable building technologies, urban simulation, and humanitarian architecture. I collaborated with several architectural firms on international design competitions and projects ranging from residential complexes to airports.

Navneet Magon Anand is a design strategist, consultant and researcher with a background in Architecture and Sustainability. She is the founder of Design Veritas, a design strategy consultancy and creative studio advocating for human and environmental sustainability and wellbeing. Her research, which focuses on intentional culture design, has a human centered approach beyond the four walls and is built on a core foundation of innovation, sustainability and wellbeing. She is a graduate of McGill University’s School of Architecture and has her MBA in Green Building and Sustainability.

My research and teaching activities are in the area of sustainable building design and building technology, with a special focus on the study of adaptive building enclosure systems. One of the goals of this research is to develop smart materials that can alter their thermal properties in response to changing outdoor conditions, in order to conserve energy and optimize building thermal comfort. This research entails the use of energy modeling tools, experimental investigations including synthesis of new materials, and the study of practical applications.

One of Professor Cullon's students recently called him "strangely fascinating." He knew that he was strange but he was happy to learn that a student found his approach to teaching fascinating. He likes to encourage students to see history not as a mass of dead facts but as a vital mode of inquiry and a moral project that has the potential to inform the present as much as illuminate the past.

I am a geographer with a focus on the cultural landscape, meaning landscapes that are shaped by people. I am interested in development, how and why places change, and why certain traditions endure. I study this mainly through vernacular architecture (traditional regional design). My research was based in the Indian Himalaya and explores what connections forest policy and cash crop markets have with the decline in architectural woodcarving and vernacular design. I hope to better understand how modernization and preservation can be balanced to sustain culturally distinct landscapes.

Katherine Foo, PhD MLA, is co-director of the Berlin Project Center and an assistant teaching professor in the Department of Integrated and Global Studies at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Her research focuses on urban environmental governance and landscape visualization for social and environmental justice. She is passionate about fostering institutional change to empower community groups by building academic-civic partnerships.  Through engaged, inclusive practices like participatory mapping, scenario development, and desi

Prof Stoddard is a human-environment geographer who is interested in the intersection of nature, society, and justice, particularly in the context of climate change. She looks at the ways in which we can design for climate resilience, in terms of infrastructure, location specific practices, and through community resilience. Stoddard also looks at the vulnerability and resilience of food systems to disasters (climate, disease outbreaks, etc.), and the impacts for humans, animals, and ecosystems.

William San Martín (He/Him/El) is Assistant Professor of Global Environmental Science, Technology, and Governance in the Department of Integrative and Global Studies at Worcester Polytechnic Institute. 

Stephen McCauley is a geographer whose work focuses on exploring how cities change and how urban futures can be inclusive, green and resilient. His broad substantive interests include climate change preparedness, urban resilience, energy system innovation, community participation in environmental decision-making, citizen science, and GI Science for urban planning. His current work addresses urban heat island dynamics and green infrastructure and other planning interventions that can mitigate the vulnerabilities associated with extreme heat in cities.

The overarching goal of my teaching and research is to contribute to an interdisciplinary understanding of environmental governance and policy. More specifically, I focus on the building of individual, organizational and institutional capacities to participate in collaborative efforts to address complex social and environmental sustainability problems through the application of science and technology.

Sarah Strauss was born and raised on the east coast. During high school and college, she was deeply involved in biomedical research, and expected her career path to lie in this direction. She enjoyed the philosophical traditions, though, and so although she worked in molecular biology laboratories, she also majored in comparative religion. During her final year in college, she discovered medical anthropology, and that changed everything. A career in anthropology would allow her to pursue all of her research interests, from health and human biology to myth and religion.

I joined WPI in 2011 as a scholar and teacher with training in public health, environmental policy, and international development studies. My research and teaching interests focused on the environment-development nexus, where tensions between sustainability and livelihoods often lead to contentious policy debates.

I enjoy my interactions with students at all levels of education, research, and mentoring, whether it be in the classroom, the lab, or in project work. I especially enjoy taking them to the Morocco Project Center and sharing with them the places where I grew up. Challenging the students to achieve higher levels of discovery is a thrill for me.

Dr. Jessica Rosewitz brings to WPI a wealth of past WPI experiences, teaching and project advising, industry and community engagement, a passion for WPI’s project-based education, and focus on continual improvement of engineering education at all levels. Her P.E. license and experience in Accelerated Bridge Construction enables her to draw upon regional engineering firms, and her dedication to early engineering education drives her outreach with local vocational schools, community organizations, and pre-K-12 programs.

I enjoy teaching civil engineering fundamentals in 1000 and 2000-level courses, and then revisiting those fundamentals in upper level and graduate courses as a base for presenting advanced topics and fostering deeper learning. This emphasis on fundamentals can be challenging to undergraduates because they may not appreciate the relevance. Consequently, I integrate design projects into my undergraduate coursework to provide a context for learning and to emphasize my expectations for learning and actively applying the course material.

I teach geotechnical and pavement engineering courses at WPI. My favorite teaching activities are helping students develop critical thinking skills and become independent learners and problem solvers for their future career in civil engineering.

My research activities in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering are in mechanics, materials, and structures. At WPI, my favorite teaching aspect is working one-on-one with graduate and undergraduate students on research projects. I like to excite students’ curiosity toward discoveries and creative scientific advancements. In our research group, we focus on the fundamental principles that control the behavior of materials in engineering and biology at multiple scales. I am particularly interested in the bioinspired design of materials and structures.

Having initially graduated from WPI with a bachelor's degree in Civil Engineering in 1995, I returned to teach part-time and pursue graduate studies in 2007. While the intervening years as a professional planner provided me with a wide variety of experience assisting towns and regions with long-term planning goals, the teaching and project advising activities at WPI have been infinitely more rewarding. I teach classes in urban and environmental planning and advise undergraduate projects in those topics and others.

Replacing our crumbling national infrastructure with conventional materials would be only a temporary solution to a critical problem. My research focuses on developing new, more durable materials for use in infrastructure, which will lead to a lowered maintenance burden, improved user safety, and a reduced environmental impact. Personally, the part that I like most about this subject is the chemistry.